According to Allied Market Research, the global fibre laser market amounted to USD 1,782 million in 2017, and is projected to reach USD 4,403 million by 2025, with a CAGR of 11.9 percent from 2018 to 2025. This can be attributed to technological advancements with respect to fibre, beam quality, lower cost of ownership and the rise of eco-friendly technologies. Furthermore, an increase in the number of applications for fibre lasers are also expected to augment the growth of the market during the forecast period. However, reduced cutting speed while processing thicker materials and undesired pulse pedestals as well as non-linear optical effects are some of the factors that have inhibited market growth.

Currently, the global fibre laser market is categorised based on a series of parameters such as type, application and region. Based on fibre laser type, the market is further segregated into infrared fibre laser, ultraviolet fibre laser, ultrafast fibre laser, and visible fibre laser. While from the standpoint of applications, the market is divided into high power, marking, fine processing, and micro processing. Meanwhile, based on region, the market can be segmented across North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and LAMEA.

The growth of vendors in emerging markets, such as Asia-Pacific and LAMEA, is projected to boost the market growth and Asia-Pacific in particular is expected to witness significant growth in future. This is due to increased demands for fibre lasers in the electronics and automotive industry. Furthermore, the region possesses significant opportunities for venture capitalists and investors, due to the lack of market saturation that is observed in developed markets. Thus, emerging markets such as South Korea, India, and Taiwan are expected to provide major contributions to the development of the fibre laser market in the future, largely due to the mining and automotive sectors.

The size of the global CNC machines market is expected to hit USD 100.9 billion by 2025, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc.

With a rising CAGR of 6.8 percent over the forecast period of 2014 to 2025, the growth in the market is due to an increasing need for reduced operating costs, manpower shortages and the requirements for minimal errors in components.

Technological advancements are also spurring the use of CNC machines in the development of highly intricate models/components with a definitive finish. This has in turn given rise to the adoption of CNC technology in lathe, milling, laser, grinding, and welding machines. The integration of CNC machines with computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) also helps in lessening the time needed for manufacturing of work pieces and enables hassle-free production of components.

Overall, the milling machines segment is estimated to post the highest CAGR of 9.5 percent during the forecast period because of their multi-functionality and reduced time requirement while the industrial segment will lead market growth till 2025 with a projected valuation of USD 25.17 billion. In terms of regional growth, the Asia Pacific region is projected to witness tremendous growth over the forecast period because of the rise of manufacturing and key contributors to the growth of the sector include Amada Co., Ltd., DMTG Corporation, Haas Automation, Inc., Okuma Corporation and Yamazaki Mazak Corporation, among several others.

Worldwide spending on the Internet of Things (IoT) is forecast to reach USD 745 billion in 2019, an increase of 15.4 percent over the USD 646 billion spent in 2018, according to a new update to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Semiannual Internet of Things Spending Guide. Overall, IDC expects that the worldwide IoT spending will maintain a double-digit annual growth rate throughout the 2017-2022 forecast period and surpass the USD 1 trillion mark in 2022.

“Adoption of IoT is happening across industries, in governments, and in consumers’ daily lives. We are increasingly observing how data generated by connected devices is helping businesses run more efficiently, gain insight into business processes, and make real-time decisions. For consumers, access to data is changing how they are informed about the status of households, vehicles, and family members as well as their own health and fitness,” said Carrie MacGillivray, Vice President, Internet of Things and Mobility at IDC. “The next chapter of IoT is just beginning as we see a shift from digitally enabling the physical to automating and augmenting the human experience with a connected world.”

The industries that are forecast to spend the most on IoT solutions in 2019 are discrete manufacturing (USD 119 billion), process manufacturing (USD 78 billion), transportation (USD 71 billion), and utilities (USD 61 billion). IoT spending among manufacturers will be largely focused on solutions that support manufacturing operations and production asset management. In transportation, more than half of IoT spending will go toward freight monitoring, followed by fleet management. IoT spending in the utilities industry will be dominated by smart grids for electricity, gas, and water.

The IoT use cases that will see the greatest levels of investment in 2019 are driven by the industry spending leaders: manufacturing operations (USD 100 billion), production asset management (USD 44.2 billion), smart home (USD 44.1 billion), and freight monitoring (USD 41.7 billion). The IoT use cases that are expected to deliver the fastest spending growth over the 2017-2022 forecast period provide a picture of where other industries are making their IoT investments. These include airport facility automation (transportation), electric vehicle charging (utilities), agriculture field monitoring (resource), bedside telemetry (healthcare), and in-store contextualized marketing (retail).

IoT services will be the largest technology category in 2019 with USD 258 billion going toward traditional IT and installation services as well as non-traditional device and operational services. Hardware spending will be close behind at USD 250 billion led by more than USD 200 billion in module/sensor purchases. IoT software spending will total USD 154 billion in 2019 and will see the fastest growth over the five-year forecast period with a CAGR of 16.6 percent. Services spending will also grow faster than overall IoT spending with a CAGR of 14.2 percent. IoT connectivity spending will total USD 83 billion in 2019.

The United States and China will be the global leaders for IoT spending in 2019 at USD 194 billion and USD 182 billion respectively. They will be followed by Japan (USD 65.4 billion), Germany (USD 35.5 billion), Korea (USD 25.7 billion), France (USD 25.6 billion), and the United Kingdom (USD 25.5 billion). The countries that will see the fastest IoT spending growth over the forecast period are all located in Latin America: Mexico (28.3 percent CAGR), Colombia (24.9 percent CAGR), and Chile (23.3 percent CAGR).

The Worldwide Semiannual Internet of Things Spending Guide forecasts IoT spending for 14 technology categories and 82 named use cases across 20 industries in nine regions and 53 countries. Unlike any other research in the industry, the comprehensive spending guide was designed to help vendors clearly understand the industry-specific opportunity for IoT technologies today.

In 2018, disbursement of FDI projects in Vietnam reached a record high of USD 19.1 billion, showing the high confidence of foreign investors in Vietnam’s business and investment environments. This is an increase of 9.1 percent year-on-year amid global concerns over the tension caused by the US China Trade War. Additionally, the rapid growth of both privately and state run enterprises such as Vingroup or Viettel is an indication of Vietnam’s economy prosperity and the fact that the country’s business environment is capable of nourishing large corporations of global scale.

However, as tensions over the Trade War continue to escalate in 2019, uncertainly over the status of the global manufacturing sector has continued to plague the industry and much attention has been focused on Vietnam due to the country’s status as an emerging manufacturing hub. Currently, the Trump administration has imposed tariffs on USD 250 billion worth of Chinese imports while China has retaliated by imposing tariffs on a cumulative value of USD 110 billion worth of US imports.

In short-term, Vietnam is projected to capture some of China’s global market share in labour-intensive manufacturing, although, in the long-term it is uncertain if Vietnam will continue to benefit from the displacement of manufacturing from China. This is because, Vietnam could face the risk of trade frauds as China looks to route US-bound products through the country to evade existing tariffs at an increasing pace. Furthermore, there is also the risk of Chinese products saturating the Vietnamese market, resulting in increased competition with domestic producers.

Thus, as the trade war drags on, experts have advised Vietnam to develop a new development strategy to evade potential risks. This is also due to the fact that global investors are starting to withdraw their investments from emerging markets, including Vietnam.

International Data Corporation (IDC) has published an IDC Innovators report profiling four companies developing collaborative robots to help drive the adoption of collaborative robotic automation and elevate the overall competitiveness of the end-user organisations. The four companies named IDC Innovators are AUBO Robotics, Franka Emika, JK-Tech Robotics, and Techman Robotics.

Intelligent collaborative robots (cobots) equipped with sensors, visions, mobility, and data analytics are finding their sweet spot applications in manufacturing, logistics, and other industries. The deployment of cobots have experienced significant growth in recent years. This trend is expected to continue in the coming years, fueled by the maturity of technology, availability of a broader range of solutions, and the accumulation of application experiences by the user community and ecosystem players.

“Cobots are being increasingly deployed by many manufacturing and logistics organizations to increase operations efficiency, agility, and product quality,” said Jing Bing Zhang, Research Director, IDC Worldwide Robotics. “With more and more vendors entering the market, it becomes imperative for vendors to focus on delivering highly differentiable and value-added solutions to address the pain points of the target customers.”

AUBO Robotics has developed several cobot models featuring high positional repeatability, open architecture and modular joint design. Users can customise the number of joints and the length between the joints to meet specific application requirements.

Franka Emika offers a seven-axis, modular, and ultra-lightweight cobots designed to interact with and assist humans safely. The company also provides Conformité Européenne (CE)-certified out of the box solution app packages for pre-defined applications.

JK-Tech Robotics has developed highly sensitive seven-axis robots with integrated torque sensors for all seven joints. This ensures that the cobots are highly sensitive, flexible, and responsive to external contact and resistance.

Techman Robotics offers several models of cobots and mobile cobots with integrated visions systems, which increases the versatility and flexibility of its robots in carrying out industrial tasks and eliminates the need for precise presentation of materials to be handled.

Asia Pacific Metalworking Equipment News is pleased to interview Mr. Pierre Teszner, President & Regional Director, Southeast Asia at Rockwell Automation regarding Rockwell’s achievements for 2018, the company’s aims for 2019, and the trends that will shape the industry in the following year.

1) Can you sum up your company’s focus and achievements in 2018?

Rockwell Automation is the world’s largest company solely devoted to industrial automation. The Connected Enterprise, which is how we implement smart manufacturing capabilities for our customers, is at the heart of everything we do. In 2018, our focus at Rockwell Automation has been to bring The Connected Enterprise to life for our customers.

With every action we took in 2018, we grew the strength of our distributors, system integrators and machine builder partners to bring the best automation and information solutions to our customers. Our partnership with PTC and the launch of our new branding towards the end of our fiscal year 2018, position Rockwell Automation tremendously well to bringing the Connected Enterprise to life for all customers and adapting it to local markets regardless of customer size, industry or geography.

2) What are your expectations on the regional economy in 2019?

The outlook for the regional economy of Southeast Asia for 2019 is positive. Factoring the risks inherent in the global trade and tariff arena, we do see a high likelihood for continued growth in the region supported by government investments (e.g. EEC Corridor in Thailand).

We also expect the FDI/ODI gaining strength into industries such as CPG (including companies involved with food production, packaged goods and beverages) and Oil & Gas. Customers are particularly investing in Southeast Asia as a regional manufacturing hub as they perceive has fewer risks and less tariff exposure.

3) What business trends in Asia capture your interest for growth next year?

Next year, we’re focused on helping our customers take the first steps to digital transformation, or continue their journey, as companies are looking at digitisation to unlock increased productivity.

Rockwell Automation has a single-minded commitment to bringing the Connected Enterprise to life for all customers Together with our partners PTC and Claroty, we’re well positioned to bridge companies’ digitisation gap through scalable solutions that suit their unique business needs – either on a CAPEX or an OPEX (infrastructure or software as-a-service), or any combination needed.

The key driver for digital transformation is the need to keep pace with the competition. Digital transformation enables organisations to optimise their existing processes and increase productivity and efficiencies within the business.

When it comes to cybersecurity, the best defence for companies is a good offence with a robust prevention and response plan to protect industrial control systems from ever-increasing cyberattacks.

5) What potential and opportunity do you see in the industry next year?

“To drive growth in the next 3-5 years, Rockwell Automation is focused on continuing to develop deep industry and country expertise and building our supplier and distributer networks. Additionally, with the region’s need for digitisation and cybersecurity we also see opportunities to help our customers to understand the world of digital transformation and the benefits that it offers.

“Through partnerships with the best universities, local governments, and Industry 4.0 agencies, Rockwell Automation is committed to elevating the industry and its needs by up-skilling students and re-skill working professionals so that the digitisation journey brings benefits to everyone.”

VinFast, a unit of Vietnam’s largest conglomerate Vingroup JSC VIC.HM, is set to become the country’s first fully-fledged domestic car manufacturer as the company is projecting to have its first car available commercially in August of 2019.

Currently, the company already has established a new plant in the northern Vietnamese port town of Haiphong, where two models will be built. And for a start, VinFast is looking to manufacture 250,000 cars annually in the next five years of production. This is equivalent to 92 percent of all the cars sold in Vietnam in 2017 according to data collated by the Vietnam Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (VAMA). To add to this, the company has earmarked about USD 3.5 billion for the project and has even debuted two vehicles at the Paris Motor Show in 2018. Commenting on the company’s ambitions, Jim Deluca, CEO of VinFast has said that, “[VinFast is] looking to expand both within ASEAN and outside.”

Beyond these vehicles, VinFast also intends to move forward with a city car through a partnership with General Motors that will also extend to automotive sales, where General Motors has given VinFast exclusive distribution rights for Chevrolet-branded vehicles in Vietnam. Other technology agreements are also underway between VinFast and General Motors and this will add on to VinFast’s expanding portfolio of partnerships such as the company’s current partnership with Siemens for the development of domestic electric buses.

As of now, a majority of the cars sold in Vietnam are foreign brands assembled in the country from kits. However, a series of free trade agreements have reduced import duties and this has opened up the market for domestic manufacturers. For example, a 30 percent import tax on cars from other Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries was removed in 2018.

Trumpf has set out to acquire 100 percent of Photonics GmbH from Philips. This opens up a new market segment for Trumpf in addition to its existing business with high-power diode lasers and expands its product portfolio. Furthermore, through this acquisition, Trumpf can expand its access to fast-growing markets in the photonics and digital products sectors.

“With this acquisition, we want to open up new product fields and expand our existing portfolio at a strategically important point,” said Nicola Leibinger-Kammüller, President and Chairwoman of Trumpf. While Lars Grünert, member of the Group Management Board, responsible for the new Trumpf product field and Chief Financial Officer, added that, “Philips Photonics employs a large number of very good developers who have opened up new areas of photonics and who will strengthen our research and development area in the long term. Together we want to further develop the Photonics division.”

In the past fiscal year 2017/18, Trumpf has invested almost 340 million euros in research and development. This corresponds to a development ratio of 9.5 percent.

Regarding the impending acquisition, Joseph Pankert, Business Leader of Philips Photonics has stated that, “[Photonicsis ] very excited to become part of Trumpf. This will ensure that the division can continue to grow in a highly innovative company in the future.”

Currently, both companies have agreed not to disclose the purchase price and the transaction is expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2019 as the authorities still have to approve the acquisition.

President Joko Widodo launched the “Making Industry 4.0” roadmap as a baseline to the country’s economic development from 2019 to 2030. This is based on the President’s belief that the fourth industrial revolution will have an impact that is 3,000 times more than the first industrial revolution. A view that was also reflected in a 2015 Mckinsey report.

Thus, it is with the “Making Industry 4.0” roadmap that the President hopes would pave the way for the Indonesian economy to achieve a top 10 global economy ranking by 2030.

And as a first step to the “Making Indonesia 4.0” roadmap, the Indonesian Government will focus in five areas of growth, namely food and beverages, textiles, automotive, electronics and chemicals, which are expected to contribute significantly toward’s the President’s ambition of driving the Indonesian economy towards a top 10 global ranking by 2030.

In total, the roadmap consists of 10 cross-sectoral national initiatives to enhance Indonesia’s manufacture sectors. This includes facilitating the flow of goods and materials, building a comprehensive and cross-industry industrial zone map, accommodating sustainability standards, empowering small and medium industries, building national digital infrastructure, foreign investment boosting, improvement of human resource development, ecosystem innovation development, incentives for technology investment, and simplification of rules and policies.

With regards to this, Industry Minister, Airlangga Hartato stated that the implementation of “Making Industry 4.0” would boost a one to two percent economic growth per year and manufacturers would be able to contribute around 21-26 percent of the country’s GDP by 2030.

That being said, Indonesia still lags behind Southeast Asia countries on the implementation of industry 4.0. Currently, Singapore leads the ASEAN region in terms of initiatives for comprehensive Industry 4.0 strategies that focuse on capability development, industry transformation, and re-skilling the workforce. While, Thailand and Malaysia have already spearheaded numerous Industry 4.0 initiatives in fields such as robotics. In addition, the implementation of Industry 4.0 in Indonesia is also ridden with challenges as the country ranks in at a lower regional position on three investment sectors that can boost Industry 4.0, namely ICT, infrastructure, and human development investment.

Hexagon’s Manufacturing Intelligence division has launched its first blue laser scanning sensor for creating point clouds. The HP-L-5.8 joins Hexagon’s comprehensive range of tactile and non-contact sensors for CMMs and is designed for companies who need a versatile, affordable, fixed-line laser sensor.

The HP-L-5.8 performs equally well when taking point cloud measurements from dark or shiny surfaces. Designed to be rugged and compact, it protects the sensor from collisions and vibrations and is ideal for use in areas where accessibility is restricted as well as on smaller CMMs.

“Increasingly our customers want to add the speed and wide measurement coverage of laser scanning to their CMM’s capabilities,” says Christian Schorr, Hexagon’s Product Manager for Laser Scanners on CMMs. “The HP-L-5.8 meets our customers’ demand for an accurate, affordable laser scanner that turns a CMM into a multisensor machine that can switch easily between tactile probing or laser scanning in a single part program.”

The HP-L-5.8 is seamlessly compatible with Hexagon CMMs that use PC-DMIS 2018 R2 and subsequent versions of the software and works with an automatic indexing probe head or continuous wrist, making it easy to operate for users of tactile probing tools.